How to More Clearly Define Your Purpose

I am really really excited about the new opportunities that I have found this last week to share my ideas with people.

The more I go through some of the struggles I faced, the more I realize I had a hand in creating every one of them, and I had to go through them.

If you read yesterdays post on creating a life transformation, you already know the three key steps necessary to making a transformation. Today, I thought we would talk about one of those steps that I see a lot of people struggling with:

Defining Your Life’s Purpose

Now, first of all, let’s get real with ourselves. We have a vague idea about what we want, but when it comes to really defining everything in our lives, it just takes too much time, work, energy, or some combination of the above.

At least, it does for most people I talk to.

However, until you define exactly what you want and where you want your life to go, you can’t get there.

A while back, I did a poll on my FB page as well as on my blog. Although I got some really great answers to a few of the questions, many of them were so vague, it’s no wonder people struggle to make it through.

Here are just a few of the answers that I got, and what was wrong with them:

I want to be more successful with my business- there are two major problems here. the first one is that it is self serving. Self serving desires will lead to chasing more and more of the same and never finding true happiness or fulfillment. The other problem with this sense of purpose is that it is too vague. You need to define HOW much money you want, and what success means to you personally. So, if this is your purpose, rewrite it to be more specific, and about how you serve your community and niche. Also, define exactly what your business is there to do for others.

my purpose is to earn lots of money-I covered this in the previous as well, but defining exactly how much you want, and making it an absolute must will guide you into finding how to make it happen. However, it might happen and you will still feel unfulfilled because it is self serving, and not about serving others. Contribute to the well being and lives of others more, and you will build a business that is successful. Focus on what you get out of it, and it will drive potential customers away because of the tone of your message.

my passion and my purpose is to help people- this will lead to more fulfillment than the previous one, but it is still too vague. Help people do what? you need to find absolute clarity in what you want to help people do in their lives.

I want to change people’s lives for the better- Changing lives is great, but there are two problems here. Okay, so by now you already know that it is too vague. However, there is another problem as well. You can’t change anyone’s life. Only they can. so, instead of trying to change people’s lives, define your purpose more around empowering people to create a change in their own lives.

I want to make people see how they can prosper- helping people find financial prosperity and abundance is awesome, and can lead to you getting more yourself. However you can’t “make people see’ anything. They do have their own free will. You also need to more specifically define how much you will help people bring in, and what your experiences are in doing so. Define how much and what you will teach specifically to make it happen.

These are just a few areas. I had a few hundred, but that would take all week to type up, but they are all very similar to these.

They have the same 3 key problems:

The majority are too vague! you have to clearly define what you want to do to create those shifts, and make the changes, which means clearly setting a goal of what to change.

Next, avoid self serving purposes- many of the people I see are living out of a self serving focus, and they struggle. I see people all the time who only focus on what they get out of everything they do. they will give you the shirt off their backs, but only if they get something out of it. Let go of the need to serve yourself, and discover the power of fulfillment through living to serve others.

They don’t define HOW you can help!– one of the big pitfalls is trying to find something that you can expertly help through sharing your experiences. You can’t do that if you don’t define how you can help solve the problem that people are facing.

Once you more clearly define the problem, define specifically how you intend to help people solve it, and do it in a way that is more about them and what they get than about you and what you get, you will be in a powerful place to impact people’s lives.

This simple shift of service completely changed my relationship with my step son in a matter of days. when I started focusing on serving my family and specifically him, rather than what I got out of our relationship, our relationship made a huge transformation.

Now, it isn’t perfect (he is 16 after all, and me being the grown up, I SHOULD know everything, right?),but we have a much better working relationship together than we had before.

Once you get these ideas down, you can start making a shift in your own life.

What is your purpose, and how is it affecting your life? Leave a Comment Below, and make sure you share this with your friends if you found it helpful to you…

About James Pruitt

James Pruitt is an author, blogger, and speaker in the areas of personal balance, personal growth, and creating inner peace. He has studied and worked with people since 1994 in the areas of spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical balance and healing. Check out more at www.jamesmpruitt.com/about